Kore-eda to direct Japan-French film from October

TOKYO -- Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, who won the top Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May for his work "Shoplifters," is poised to start shooting a Japanese-French movie in October featuring a string of big stars.

The movie, to be named "La Verite" (the truth), will star prominent actors such as Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke and Ludivine Sagnier, the film's distributor says. The screenplay will be written by Kore-eda, but the film will be in the French language and most of the cast and staff will be French, too. It is slated to be released next year.

The film is about an established actress who has led her life without caring for her family -- a role to be played by Deneuve, 74, who made her name in films such as "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg." The daughter of the actress in the story, who has a strained relationship with her mother, will be played by Juliette Binoche, 54, who won an Academy Award for her role in "The English Patient." Children, who play vital roles in Kore-eda's films, will be likely featured in the new work, and auditions have begun.

Kore-eda, who had been in contact with Deneuve and Binoche and promised to make a movie together with them, says of the upcoming film, "The cast is what I had hoped for. It's an exciting challenge to direct a film overcoming cultural and language differences."